


Prince's Garden

by parsnipit



Category: Sanders Sides, Thomas Sanders, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Fluff, M/M, and a teeny-tiny bit of angst bc anxiety, just literally a whole bunch of chill fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 17:54:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11041281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parsnipit/pseuds/parsnipit
Summary: Prince has been feeling down, so the other sides put their heads together to create something to cheer him up. Anxiety, despite his creative ability, discovers that creating nice things is not his strong suit—at all—and is utterly certain that Prince will hate what he’s made.





	Prince's Garden

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: swearing, self-dislike

“Oh, oh, what about this one, Lo?” Morality says, pointing to a picture of a white flower with darker lines running from its center to the tips of each of its five petals. “Can we have this one?”

“You _do_ realize that that’s asphodel, and that it symbolizes regret? In fact, I think the actual symbolic statement is something along the lines of ‘my regrets follow you to grave,’” Logic says.

“Oh. Maybe not that one, then.”

“No, that’s actually pretty fitting,” Anxiety says, peering over Morality’s shoulder to look at the asphodel. “I like it. Let’s put it in the corner.”

“Fine,” Logic says.

“Wait, what?” Morality asks, looking between the two of them. “Really?”

“If you can make it, you can plant it,” Logic says.

Anxiety scowls at him. “You know, you don’t have to be such a jerk about it. If you really don’t want asphodel in the garden, I—”

“No, I’m serious. If you can make it, I won’t complain about it being there at all.”

“Yeah, but we both know damn well that I _can’t_ make it, so that’s a moot point.”

“Of course you can make it,” Morality says, eyes brightening. He leans forward, depositing the flower book into Anxiety’s lap. “We’ll help you.”

“It won’t do any good. I’m not the creative side.”

“Neither are we. But, while creating things may be more difficult for us, it is not impossible. And of the three of us here, Anxiety, I daresay you are the most creative not-creative side. You are ever coming up with ridiculous and unlikely possibilities,” Logic says. Anxiety frowns, and Logic leans down and—very pointedly—presses a kiss to the top of his head, adding, “That is not an _entirely_ bad thing.”

Anxiety runs his fingers over the glossy picture of asphodel, then sighs. “Fine. I’ll try, but don’t hold your breath.”

“Yay!” Morality says, clapping his hands together and sitting cross-legged in front of Anxiety. “Okay, okay, so first—first—well, Logan, you’re best at teaching, do you want to explain it?”

Logic unsubtly preens at the praise and sits next to them, taking the book from Anxiety and flipping to another page. He taps on a picture of a white flower with a bright yellow center. “This is the flower I’ve chosen, chamomile. In order to create it, you must—or I must, at least—study it first. You need to be able to see it clearly in your mind. By observing its physical characteristics and understanding the basic physiological structures of plants, you can gain an understanding of how to—to fit it together in your head and thus in the mindscape, so to speak.”

Morality cocks his head. “That’s not how I do it.”

“And how do you do it?” Logic asks, looking skeptically at him.

“Well, you look at it, sure, but then you have to kind of _feel_ it. You have to feel what you want it to look like, what you want it to make others feel, and then it kind of just—just forms itself,” Morality says.

Logic sighs. “Or you could do it that way, I suppose. You, like Morality, are emotionally-oriented, so his method may be easier for you, Ann.”

Anxiety cups his hands, looks bitterly at the empty space between them. There’s no way he’s going to be able to create anything worthwhile. Some freak twiggy plant he can do, maybe, but not an asphodel as pretty as the one in the book.

“Well, kiddo,” Morality says, clapping him on the shoulder, “we’ll let you practice for a while. Logan, come on. Let’s go plant our _tulips_ together.”

Logic groans, but he lets Morality press their lips together as they stroll towards their newly-created tulips. Anxiety watches them go, the yellow spring sunshine falling down on their hair and shoulders and the cobblestone path rasping merrily under their shoes.

As Anxiety watches, he can hear Logic’s voice drifting back as he speaks to Morality. “Did you know that in _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,_ the first words Snape said to Harry were ‘Potter! What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?’ Because of the symbolic significance of both mentioned plants, it actually referred to how much he regretted Lily’s death. I thought it was a fascinating literary decision to…”

As he talks, Morality’s eyes never once leave him, and Anxiety knows that if he were to look into that gaze, there would be nothing but utter warmth and adoration. A part of him longs to run after them and help them plant their stupid tulips, but another part of him—a part that is, for the moment, stronger—actually wants to try to create a flower by himself. So he looks back at his hands, takes a deep breath, and tries.

He uses Logic’s tactic, first. He studies the picture of the asphodel, building an image of it in his mind and attempting to understand how it works and how it’s put together. Then he tries to put it together in the realm of the mindscape, squeezing his eyes shut and grasping at the strands of Thomas’ imagination that aren’t currently held hostage by Prince. They are few and far between, but he would rather use them than his own dark, unhappy creativity.

He feels the weight of matter in his hands, consolidating as he wills it, and he feels a twinge of hope. When he opens his eyes, however, his heart sinks. It’s an asphodel—but only vaguely. The leaves connect to the stem at odd angles, the petals droop, and the coloring is off, a dull replica of the image he held in his mind.

Anxiety crushes his failed attempt in his hands and throws it off to the side. He’ll try Morality’s method, but he has little hope that it will work any better. At least then he’ll know how shitty he really is at this, though. (As if he wasn’t entirely certain before.) He tries to think about how the flower makes him feel—bad—and how he wants it to make Prince feel. On the surface, he hopes that Prince will be offended. (But really, he hopes Prince will like it.)

Then, clinging to those feelings, he tries to translate them into the physical form of a flower. The atrocity that he sees when he opens his eyes, however, can scarcely been considered a flower. It’s even worse than his last attempt, which he hadn’t thought possible. Its petals are enlarged, its leaves crooked and too smooth, and it’s _pink._

He rips it, quite brutally, into pieces, and then throws it off to the side and glares at the ground. Of course he can’t create anything as ridiculously pretty as an asphodel. The only things he can create are nightmares and shadows and worthless little worries. As though to prove a point to himself, he brings his hands together again and focuses—focuses on that stupid ball of irritation and inadequacy that boils in his chest and crams it into the shape of a flower.

When he opens his palms, the ugliest plant he has ever seen sits between them. It has black petals, curled at the edges as though they’ve been singed. Its leaves are crooked and toothily serrated. Its stem is a rotting, dark brown and thorns glint malevolently on it. Its roots are a tangle, wrapping and coiling in sickly black strands around his fingers, and he is at once satisfied and horrified by what he has created.

It is, at last, an adequate representation of his own sick creativity—but it’s certainly not something that deserves to be planted in their garden. He pinches a petal between his fingers, ready to pluck it off (it will be a slow death for this piece of him) but before he can, Morality is crouching in front of him, and his hands come up to cup Anxiety’s.

“What are you doing, sweetheart?” he asks, eyes wide. “Did you make this?”

Anxiety grimaces. “It’s ugly, I know. I told you I couldn’t—”

“Not at all,” Morality says. “It’s perfect.”

Anxiety arches an eyebrow at him.

“He is correct,” Logic says, kneeling beside them and gently unwinding the flower’s roots from Anxiety’s fingers. “Whilst you may currently be unable to create an exact replica of something, you display an incredible amount of creative talent when it comes to forming individual works. Prince will be delighted.”

“I doubt it,” Anxiety says, relinquishing the flower to Logic without a bit of regret. The less he touches the ugly thing, the better. “It’s like the physical incarnation of death.”

“An adequate representation of your personality, then,” Logic says, and Anxiety scoffs.

“Come on, come on,” Morality says, tugging on their hands before they can plunge into a petty argument. “Let’s plant it. Where should we put it? Next to the carnations? Or the azaleas? Do you think it prefers full sun or shade, Logan?”

“Wait, no,” Anxiety says. “You can’t plant it. It’ll—it looks bad. It’ll throw the whole, like, aesthetic off.”

“It will do no such thing. If we plant in the corner and propagate it, it will give the impression of deeper shadows—and as much as you refuse to acknowledge it, shadows _are_ a part of Prince’s personality, too. I think he will appreciate the symbolism,” Logic says.

“Since you made it, you have to help us plant it.” Morality reaches down and hauls him to his feet and pulls him, despite his weak protests, towards the spades and gardening gloves. “Oh, this is so exciting! Prince is going to love it.”

Thus resigned to his fate, Anxiety plants his stupid flower in the far corner of the garden, where the cherry trees dapple the sunlight to keep it from burning. He scowls at it once it’s in the ground, even as Morality hops around him with the watering hose.

After that, he helps Morality and Logic finish planting the tulips, then the geraniums, and then, lastly and most importantly, the rose bushes. When they’re done, they stand back and dust the dirt off of their pants and shirts and survey their work. It’s not a particularly large garden, nor is it perfect by any means. Parts of it lack color, and most of it lacks originality, but that’s what they get for keeping Prince out of the loop, isn’t it?

Hopefully he’ll like it anyway.

“It’s perfect,” Morality says, eyes shining. There’s a smudge of dirt beneath his eye, and Anxiety licks his thumb and wipes it away. “Can he come see it now?”

“Fine,” Logic says. Then, turning his voice out into the mindscape, he calls, “Thomas, we’re ready. You can quit distracting him now. Send him out here, please.”

Not half a minute later Prince is popping into existence in front of them, a rather confused look on his face. “Well, hello,” he says. “Thomas said you wanted me. He’s been acting strange all day, hasn’t he? He doesn’t usually need my help so very much once I’ve given him an idea—but never mind that. Where are we?”

“Your garden,” Morality says, beaming and whirling Prince around to face the flowers.

“My what?” Prince asks.

“This is your garden,” Logic says. “We, ah, created it for you, although I must admit that none of us are as practiced at creating as you are so it’s a bit— _iffy_ —in spots.”

“You guys—you made this? For me?” Prince’s voice sounds so stunned that it makes Anxiety’s heart hurt. “Why?”

“Because we love you,” Morality says, wrapping his arms around Prince’s waist.

“Also because we noticed that you’ve been acting unhappy since last week’s video and thought this was an adequate way to cheer you up,” Logic says.

“But mostly because we love you,” Morality insists.

“One does not necessarily cancel out the other, Patton,” Logic says. He extends his hand to Prince, who hesitantly takes it—his eyes are still roaming over the garden, as though he can’t quite believe it’s there. “Come. We’ll show you the plants. We selected a variety of different species from a catalog Thomas went through earlier. Here we have _Rosa floribunda ‘Europeana,’_ and here is…”

They make a loop through the garden, and Prince is—for once in his life—silent. Anxiety hopes that that’s a good thing, but it could just be that he’s so utterly disappointed with their efforts he can’t properly express it. Actually, that’s most likely, now that he thinks about it. When they get to Anxiety’s flower, however, Prince breaks his silence.

“That’s Anxiety’s, isn’t it?” he asks.

Anxiety shrinks into his hoodie, tugging nervously on his drawstrings. “It’s shit, I know. You don’t have to tell me.”

“No,” Prince says, reaching out and pulling him closer, looping an arm over his shoulders. “It looks like you.”

Anxiety bristles. “Listen, I know it’s ugly. We can just pull it up.”

“That’s not what I meant, darling,” Prince says. “It’s beautiful, in a weird kind of way—like you.”

Anxiety’s not entirely sure if he should be offended or not, but he can’t bring himself to argue with Prince any more—not when he’s looking at Anxiety’s stupid flower and this whole stupid garden like it’s everything he ever wanted. He motions Morality and Logic in, wrangles them into an odd kind of group hug, and presses a kiss to each of their foreheads.

“Thank you, loves,” he says. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“It was nothing, really,” Logic says, but there’s a faint blush on the high arches of his cheekbones, and he adjusts his glasses.

“Anything for you, honey,” Morality says, nuzzling into the crook of his neck. “You deserve everything we can give you and more.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Anxiety says, shrugging—but he presses closer to Prince, savors the warmth between their sides. “It’s no big deal.”

They spend the rest of the day in the garden, basking in the sunlight they’ve conjured up for themselves. Anxiety had expected Prince to tear through the flowers, imparting color and light and fixing all of their blatant mistakes, but he doesn’t. “It’s perfect just the way it is,” he says, and even Anxiety can’t argue with the wonder in his eyes.

And when he turns that same wondering look to Anxiety’s flower, well, maybe he doesn’t hate it as much as he did before—but it’s still damn ugly, sentiment or not.


End file.
